D&D 5E You Cant Fix The Class Imbalances IMHO

[Pedantic]

There's truth to it, they're just all the same truth: "ick, balance! kill it with fire!" I mean, when you have a range of differently worded complaints, each of which can only be resolved by restoring class imbalances, they're all about restoring class imbalances.

I continue to be annoyed that 4e has been reified as the "balance" edition, and now we can only discuss balance in terms of how close or far one is from 4e's particular design choices. We're never going to get another pass at a comprehensive "non-combat" set of mechanics without comparison to skill challenges and generic resolution systems now, and we're always going to be dragging the late game down to what the fighter chassis can handle or fighting about how we've failed to do so, and non-magical healing will dog every discussion of support classes for the rest of time.

We're going to continue to do "balance means that game design I didn't like, and therefor is actually the problem" for all time, when we could actually be discussing competing design goals.

 

[Umbran]

Indeed looking at the UA playtest, some players will be unsatisfied for another 10 years.

Well, yeah. Pleasing literally everyone is not a real option available to us.

It is impossible not to see 4e as a different game with similar names, at least to me.

Same as 3e and 5e. All different games.

Everyone sees that, mechanically, they are different games.

The question for each of us is whether these games scratch enough of the core itches we think of as "D&D", which at this point is more of a genre of games than it is one specific game.

Doing that is entirely separate from the activity of declaring one or another of them to be "Not-D&D" in a general sense. We get to do that for ourselves, but doing it for others is a toxic approach to discourse about games.

 

[Umbran]

We're never going to get another pass at a comprehensive "non-combat" set of mechanics without comparison to skill challenges and generic resolution systems now...

4e's approach to such things has become rather common in other parts of the RPG world - given time, it'll come back around again.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, yeah. Pleasing literally everyone is not a real option available to us.



Everyone sees that, mechanically, they are different games.

The question for each of us is whether these games scratch enough of the core itches we think of as "D&D", which at this point is more of a genre of games than it is one specific game.

Doing that is entirely separate from the activity of declaring one or another of them to be "Not-D&D" in a general sense. We get to do that for ourselves, but doing it for others is a toxic approach to discourse about games.

Oh sure. They're all D&D in a legal sense, and they're all D&D to someone. I just object to the idea that it's any kind of evolution. Different design teams working for the same corporation made different games.

 

[Umbran]

Oh sure. They're all D&D in a legal sense, and they're all D&D to someone. I just object to the idea that it's any kind of evolution. Different design teams working for the same corporation made different games.

Well, folks are generally misusing the term and concept of "evolution" then they are referring to human-designed things anyway.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, evolution isn't the word, technically. It's an OK analogy, maybe? Or just a common misuse...
...so development, refinement, incremental improvement...

I just object to the idea that it's any kind of evolution. Different design teams working for the same corporation made different games.

It wasn't consistently any sort of development or improvement, but while they were working for the same corporation, each design team had a different goal they were working towards with their new versions. 3.0 was to white-knight D&D, saving it from the death of TSR and immortalizing it for posterity, prettymuch at the whim of the then-head of WotC, which made the OGL a great idea. Then Hasbro wanted to flog more revenue from it, so 3.5 was designed to be just different enough to sell the core books again. But, that wasn't enough, Hasbro didn't like 3pps taking their money and wanted to kill the OGL with the GSL and rake in MMO level revenue off a vaporware DDI - that meant the new ed had to not just be utterly different, but a great deal better, to force 3pps to give up the favorable OGL for the lethal GSL, thus the design team went big with 4e. When no 9-digit revenue materialized and the backlash against a balanced/different/not-D&D threatened to poison the IP, the goal was to retrench, calm the nerdrage, and do it cheap, 5e was the result. Then the 80s in general and D&D in particular finally came back, and One D&D's goal became don't rock the boat, and One D&D became fully-backwards-compatible 5e.2024.

Different corporate goals, different games.

But, no not figuratively evolution, the changes weren't incremental, they didn't build on those before (much), and they were very top-down goal-driven intentional.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You guys know evolution does have a second definition, right?

 

[Tony Vargas]

You guys know evolution does have a second definition, right?

Nope. Darwin or nuth'n originalism, all the way.

 

[Bluenose]

At least without a rewrite like 4E. Do that it's a different game.

So I suppose the question becomes, isn't that what 3e did to earlier editions? And in the process made the imbalance that certainly existed in 1e and BECM and 2e significantly worse than before?


Anyway, making the balance perfect might not be possible. Making it better - because it WAS better in all editions prior to 3e - is clearly do-able in the mechanical sense. It won't happen because WorC appear determined never to do anything to upset that part of the fanbase determined to have casters retain the power imbalance in their favour that developed over time - an ievitably when every edition except 4e has increased the power of casters significantly while not doing the same for other classes.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So I suppose the question becomes, isn't that what 3e did to earlier editions? And in the process made the imbalance that certainly existed in 1e and BECM and 2e significantly worse than before?

Arguably, if you assume that all the myriad restrictions older editions placed on casters were faithfully implemented by DMs and not circumvented by clever play... in an era that is famed for every DM running the game differently. ...something 5e, I think unironically, also strives for.

One thing I remember hearing a lot when 3.0 was new was "this is just like a lot of my old variants!" ...I didn't find that true for much (OK, I confirmed crits, that was about it), but I heard it a lot.

Anyway, making the balance perfect might not be possible. Making it better - because it WAS better in all editions prior to 3e - is clearly do-able in the mechanical sense. It won't happen because WorC appear determined never to do anything to upset that part of the fanbase determined to have casters retain the power imbalance in their favour that developed over time - an ievitably when every edition except 4e has increased the power of casters significantly while not doing the same for other classes.

Perfect balance is impossible, IMHO, because balance is aspirational, you can always add new choices that are meaningful and viable and don't obviate any existing choices... it just gets harder and harder to do! By the same token, better balance is always possible, in well-balanced games, too, not just badly-balanced ones like D&D.
The TSR era had some balancing factors built in, on paper, but the attitude it had was very much to let DMs do what they liked, so whether those factors made a difference depended on the individual DM.
3e didn't just reduce or eliminate those balancing factors, it produced a community that was willing to set RaW above the DMs' ancient prerogative to change and overrule the rules. (Even tho 3.0, itself, explicitly called out a white-wolf-style 'Rule 0,' the community attitude was still that, RaW were a higher order and 'that's a house rule' was dismissive, or that, for instance, house rules had better be pinned down before characters are built, or the DM was bing somehow unfair.)
4e of course, balanced the classes to a much greater degree than 3e or TSR eds, and did so without resorting to punitive measures or DM fiat. 5e helpfully reversed all that. Well, 5e didn't reverse removing restrictions from casters.